DOWN THE DRAIN

​Reading Kahneman's Think Slow and Fast, made me remember a few years ago, I sat in the Board Room with other community members. The municipality was showing us the rationale for partnering with the federal government in the tune of USD 300 million dollars private-public-partnership to provide a new water supply source and treatment plant for the residents. 

They've got charts, graphs, and statistics to prove the water scarcity will be catastrophic to residents and businesses in four years. The partnership will be involve a new water source to avert the water depletion, including a private company running the water delivery for 30 years. The residents were persuaded to vote positively in the referendum on this matter.

The residents were not too sure with this project and the referendum lost. 

It turned out, that the water supply source was not the problem, but the system capacity was. The water scarcity was a tactical pressure. The project was on hold until further independent assessments were done. Past forward in 2016, there was no water scarcity as predicted by the staff and proponents of the P3 project. 

According to the commission overseeing the water supply system, the supply is assured to be in good standing until 2031 but conservation efforts must be upheld. 

Watching this in the sidelines kept me thinking about the agenda behind this powerful push. I knew something was just not computing. Throwing 300 million USD dollar down the drain on unnecessary fixes and indirect activities is the worst you can do for water.

Slow thinking which means looking at evidence and securing a multiplicity of independent perspectives could avoid a likely catastrophic policy mistake. Although not perfect, this is as close as you can get to the real water issue. 

I'm relieved the residents took a hold of this issue until rational minds get to work.